How to Read Food Labels Like a Dietitian

There is so much nutrition information out there. Welcome to Diet Notes, the weekly podcast delivered by a dietitian designed to make your diet a whole lot easier. Welcome to Diet Notes for another Monday morning. And a topic that I haven't covered for quite some time on either the Nutrition Catch podcast, Willian, or this podcast ever, or even in my content for some time is label reading. But I know that is something that is of interest to all of us really, because we're often scanning foods in the supermarket and trying to determine if they're a good choice. Now the first thing I'll say is that we actually have an e-book, the Nutrition Catch product guide, which was just updated last year available on the NutritionCouch.com website, which really goes through in details all of our favorite products at the supermarket across cold, woolly's, and outie. And NutritionCouch includes their ingredients, their nutritional panels, and why they are standout products nutritionally. So if you are interested, you can certainly go and find that. And in any of my e-books, I often cover products. I'm about to release a peri four week e-book, and that has a lot of product suggestion in it as well. But in terms of actually scanning foods at the supermarket, one of the things to keep in mind that it's actually quite complicated because it's not a matter of this is a good product and this isn't. It always depends on the category of product you're looking at because different foods have different nutritional profiles. So for example, when I'm looking at a bread, I'm not really looking at protein, because you don't get a lot of protein from bread, you might get some, but you're primarily getting that from animal-based foods or legumes. So I'm not necessarily looking at the protein content of bread. For example, I'm much more interested in the dietary fiber, the whole grain content, and the carbohydrate. So you do have to kind of keep in mind of the primary nutrient that you're looking at depending on a category for a starting point. And the health star rating is a tricky one because it's not compulsory to put foods in it in second. It's still rating ultra-process foods according to what's a better ultra-process food, whereas professionals will argue, well, they shouldn't have a star rating at all. So that's not a very sound guide. Really, the only strong guide is the nutritional panel and the ingredient list. And that's what I focus on myself. I don't really look at health star ratings because there's too many issues with that system and issues that I'm going to take quite some time if ever to fix. So let's go through the key things that I do look at as a dietitian when I'm looking at products and comparing. And so, for example, choosing a product that I would buy or that I'd recommend, or maybe why would I pick that yogurt over others. So the very first thing that I'm always looking at is the ingredient list because the length of the ingredient list gives a really good idea into how processed the food is. And generally, the short of the ingredient list, in general, the better the food's like it'd be. For example, something like corn thins is just basically corn and a bit of salt. Meat is meat. They have very few additives in them if any. And generally speaking, if you recognise most of the products on there, if you're looking for whole foods, bases, they're good choices. So a classic example that brings to mind is if you look at snack bars, well, a lot of the snack bars out there now, the first ingredient is chocolate. It's a chocolate bar. So, whereas a whole seed or nut bar, you'll see that there it's got a whole ingredient base and there's not as many additives. The list sun is long. They have less additives like preservatives and molspe fires. Numbers we don't recognise flavour enhancers like MSG. So that is by far and away the first thing I will generally look at. And as soon as it's getting too long, that's when I lose interest nutritionally, if it's sort of full of a lot of fillers and things. And certainly more ultra-processed foods like, for example, a lot of crumbed chicken, for example, a lot of processed soups, a lot of snack food, flavoured chips, biscuits. They're the ones that have got incredibly long ingredient lists and as such, they in theory are not overly good for us. And whilst there might be some who are slightly better than others, they're not foods that I'm regularly recommending. The next thing I typically look at is carbohydrates. And not because carbs are bad by any means, but carbohydrate in foods that offer carbohydrates. So things like bread, cereals, rice, pasta, any kind of processed food, soups, cereals, biscuits, cakes, pastries. The amount of carbohydrate gives an indication of the amount of fuel in the food. And so I tend to use that as a guide about how heavy the food is. So for example, when I look carbs per serve, because that's a reference point. So a key reference point dietitians will use is that a slice of bread has got roughly 15 grams of carbohydrate or in the old days a carbohydrate exchange when we worked out carbohydrate exchanges for diabetics. So if I then look at a bread or a wrap, for example, and it has got 60 grams of carbohydrate per serve, I work out that's equivalent of four slices of bread, keeping in mind that a serve of carbohydrate for meals roughly two slices of bread. So anything over 30 is quite a dense food. So for example, pasta and rice might come in at 60 to 80 grams of carbs per serve. And that's not saying that it's a bad food. It's just saying they're a dense food. So when I'm looking at things like biscuits, bread, foods that offer carbohydrate, milk drinks even, yogurt, I'm looking at how many carbs they've got per serve because indirectly if they're high in sugar that will come out in the carb rating. So some of the sugary yoghurt I looked at last week had 25 grams of carbs per serve or 25 grams of sugars. So I knew that that little yogurt tub had the equivalent of two slices of bread. So I roughly work on carbohydrates because I work primarily in weight control. And so 30 grams of carbs roughly a serve. So things that come in around there, I'm sort of more likely to reach for a bread that's 24, 30 grams of carb per serve, the one that's 50 per serve because that's a much more dense product. And as I said, it's not to say rice and pasta is bad, it's just to say that they're denser in carbohydrate. But when I'm looking at processed forms of carbs, I'm looking at carb. And that's a rough guide and the same with sugars. I like foods generally they contain less than five grams of added sugars per serve. Not five percent sugar because that's quite low, but five grams of added sugar per serve. But that's complicated as well because if you look at dairy, it will have more sugars and it's naturally occurring, which is why now on yoghurt, you'll see a lot of them claiming no added sugar. The same as those flavoured kind of high protein milk drinks, they'll write on them no added sugars. So if I'm choosing yoghurt for kids, for example, I want varieties that have got listed no added sugar, even though if I looked at the sugars on the label, they might be quite high and have 12 or 15 grams. If it's naturally occurring lactose, I'm not as worried about it, same with fruit products. But I want foods that have got no added sugars or less than five grams per serve. So when, for example, we're looking at snack bars. If I'm trying to encourage a client to choose a healthiest snack bar, I'm wanting something that's got less than five grams of added sugars per serve. I don't mind a little bit, but I want to keep it as low as possible. So first I'm looking at ingredients and I'm starting to look at carbohydrate and sugars. When it comes to fat, when I was a much younger dietitian, fat was big. It was the 90s and beyond and we all wanted low fat food. And so as such, we would look for foods that had less than three grams of fat per 100 or less than 3% saturated fat. So it might be higher in fat, a food like an oil, but have low saturated fat. Nuts, for example, nuts, spreads. It's changed a little bit now because we're less fat phobia. Can we understand that just because something's low fat doesn't mean it's a good choice. But generally speaking for animal-based foods, I will be looking at foods that have less than 10% fat. That's a really good guide for meat. And even more importantly, if it's got less than 3% saturated fat. So when it comes to things like dairy and meat, which are a source of fat in the diet, I want lean cuts. So if I'm choosing mints, for example, I'll be more likely to pay extra and get the lean mints at 10% fat or the extra lean at 5% fat compared to the regular fat, which might be as much as 20%. That's why something with sausages or lean meat patties, I'll get peppercorn because they're less than 10% fat and also less than 3% saturated fat because that's the bad fat that we don't have any real functional need for. That's why if you look at chicken thighs and wings and drumsticks, they're much higher in saturated fat than chicken breast. And in the case of dairy, if you have full fat, Greek yogurt or full cream milk, it's about 10% fat. And then you lean down and if you're going to light, it's about 4% fat or skim or low fat as 1% fat. So we're skimming fat out of those foods that we don't necessarily need it. Now that's a little bit different if you're looking at things like nuts, avocados, salmon, they will be much, much higher in fat. But in general, the saturated fat component is much lower overall and hence the definition of a good fat versus a bad fat, even if it's a higher fat product. So recently I had a look for an article at spreads, so butters and margarine. So butter, for example, is 80% fat overall and almost 60% saturated fat. That's compared to butter spreads which have a mix of margarine in them and they're about 60% fat and about a 30% saturated. So that's where the difference is butter is much more dense, it's like cream or full cream milk. It's a choice how you you want to use your fat, but the difference is that the spreads are much, much lower in saturated fat compared to the original dairy-based foods. Then the protein. Now, if you're eating meat, you can fish eggs dairy, you're getting protein. You get more in meat, 20, 30 grams of protein per serve, about half that in dairy. You get about 10 grams per serve in milk, and the higher protein plant milk, so you might get up to 20 in a higher protein yogurt. I generally don't look a lot at protein on a food label, because if I'm eating eggs dairy meat, I know I'm getting more than enough protein. Protein is a buzzword in processed food now, so everyone's claiming it. Peats are snack bars, chips, chocolates, high protein fish. It's a real marketing buzz. Now, a serve of protein is about 20, 30 grams per main meal, maybe 10 to 20 grams per snack. So when you're seeing bars in the supermarket that say high protein coming in at 10, they're not overly high. They've got more protein than a plain bar that might already have five, but 10 is not overly high. If you had a couple of eggs, you get that. If you had a tuna tuna, you get 20. If you had a cup of enomame, you'd get 10. If you had a protein yogurt, you'd get 15 to 20. So 10 grams in a snack is not overly high. I will look at protein if I'm trying to count it particularly for snacks. So if I'm trying to get my women to have 20 grams of protein as a snack, and they're using cheese and nuts, and that gives them 10. It's far short. So I'll be looking at snacks that might have a little bit more. But generally speaking, higher protein processed foods are not overly good for us. They tend to pack a lot more calories. The classic example of that is these high protein snack bars, which might come in at 200 calories, which is half a meal. Whereas snacks usually, we would want them to be a bit lower in calories than that. So whilst you might be getting 10 grams of protein, you know, often getting a lot of saturated fat and a lot of extra calories too. So I'll scan protein. But for main meals, I'm not getting it from bread or crackers. You know, I'm looking at it in dairy and whole foods. And maybe I'm counting it in some snacks. And if there's a higher protein, snack can sometimes be a good option. But even snacks will range 5, 10, maybe 15 grams. They're not overly high. So it might be slogan on the front of a frozen meal. But if you look at a lot of frozen meals, if they've got 20, 30 grams of protein, they've often got 60 grams of carb. So they're still filling it up with rice and pasta. There's only a handful of frozen pre-made meals that have got controlled amounts of protein and carbohydrate. It just doesn't tend to come together very, very often. So that's one of the things that you might look for in a frozen meal. Or in the case of the high protein subway that's been released or the El Jhanir rap, they might be high in protein, but they've got a mega load of calories. So calories are important keeping you in mind that a small meal will have 4,500, maybe 600 calories. If you're having a fast food meal or rap and it's got 1,000 calories, that's more than half what the average female needs for a day. So you can see that the numbers on food labels are all just relevant to that food really, which is why I like to direct clients to products rather than label reading just because it's a minefield. And there's a lot of differences around why we might pick something for example, sometimes I'll post a treat like a dessert and someone will write, "Oh, how can you be recommending dessert?" But if it's 100 calories, so insignificant, I'm not really worried about it. Someone's eating an ice cream that's 80 calories and got 10 grams of sugar in the big scheme of thing that's nothing to worry about in 100 calories. If it was a big 300 or a maxi-bond maybe, but when it's 100 calories, a bit of sugar's not the end of the world. So it's all those sort of individual differences that might mean you recommend a food for a reason even though on the surface it doesn't look healthy or it might have a very long ingredient list. The next thing, sometimes I will look at salt, but I will look at salt only in foods that are notorious for having a little salt. So we want to try and keep salt below about 2000 milligrams, 2500 milligrams per day. So as soon as I'm seeing a meal or a soup or a processed meat or seasoned sauce or marinade that's got more than 1000 milligrams of sodium percent of that's a mega. That's almost half your daily salt intake, that's what's going to leave you feeling bloated and carrying fluid. And certainly in the case of fast food meals, they can have upwards of a thousand, even close to 2000 milligrams of sodium as can things like two minute noodle bowls. So I will scan it on those process foods, not not on most things, not breakfast cereal, I'm not looking at it at bread, I'm looking at it for canned products, pre-made meals, frozen food items like pizza and crumb chicken and fish. That's where it will be, anything with the sauce. I will look at it for marinades because again some Asian sources can have upwards of a thousand milligrams per serve. They're incredibly high, which is why if you eat dumplings and soy sauce and you wait yourself the next day, you might be two kilos heavier. It's not fat, it's fluid because of the huge load of salt. So particularly coming into winter and looking at soups and pre-made meals, I would look at that and I try and keep it. And 100 is a reasonable intake, anything over a thousand, I would generally put back on the shelf or I wouldn't recommend it if I was writing an article or including it in a product guide. And then the last thing that I might also look at is the additives in the food. So whilst there are whole sites dedicated to additives, whilst I think small amounts of things like preservatives and amulsifiers and not the end of the world, in small tiny amounts, I'm going to do anything. And most food we eat at some point will have some in. But if I am being relatively strict on nutrition panels and ingredient list, if I'm seeing things like a lot of amulsifiers, a lot of numbers, a lot of additives, things specifically I tend to stick clear of. I'm not a big fan of flavour enhancers. They're often in chicken flavoured beef, flavoured cheese, flavoured things like noodles, rice cakes, flavoured chips, flavoured biscuits. Because the research on flavour enhancers is that they encourage over consumption and that's why you get that moreish flavour. So I do proactively try and avoid those even with kid snack food. We will consume some added MSG, or sorry some naturally occurring MSG like compounds in a number of cuisines, including Mexican Chinese food. But I'm talking about added flavour enhancers in foods that shouldn't be having that flavour. So chicken chips that don't have any chicken in them. So I will try and avoid those. I do try and avoid artificial sweeteners, as part I am still in the food supply. In soft drink in particular flavoured soft drinks. I will tend to avoid those in favour of natural sweeteners. And also food colours. So anything with those bright colours that M&Ms and products like that have, with the colours around kids food lollies, I do try and avoid those. If you have that blanket rule to avoid foods with a longing gradient list, you'll naturally get rid of a lot of those food additives. But I will put back soups and pre-made meals that are using flavour enhancers. I did notice that a well-known high protein meal company has started to use a lot of flavour enhancers in their meals and I was disappointed. Because it is basically highly processed and it's giving us flavours that are not naturally occurring and that's not good for our programming and the desire to eat different foods. And then I guess sometimes I will look at calories. You know, I always think if Leonardo and I are chatting about products, we will notice if something's got a huge amount of calories for a small amount of food. For example, a pre-made meal that's got 6-800 calories is generally too much for a small female. Same with a lot of the higher protein processed foods like the pizzas and the burritos. They might have more protein but they also tend to have a lot more calories. So as a rule of thumb, meals that have more than say 5, 600 are getting up there for women and snacks that have more than 2,300 are getting up there too. If you're seeing a protein bar or a drink, their meals, they're not snacks and that's the problem. The packed full of nutrition, the protein powders, the dates, the nuts, the nut butters, they really load up the calories and you're getting bars and snacks that have got 2,300 calories per serve which is too much for the average small female. So that's my list. First check the ingredient list out. Cubs per serve will give you an idea of the density and keeping the sugars under 5, less than 10% fat or definitely less than 3% saturated fat is a good marker for our protein foods and our meat chicken fish in particular. I might have a little look at protein sometimes, particular processed foods, it's same with salt and then I'll do a quick scan and I'm trying to keep the additives and the numbers and the colors as low as possible but that learns itself to the nutritional panel to if it's a short ingredient list. It's generally a pretty good product. And the funny thing is that when you take into account all these numbers, you end up with a selection of foods that's quite small. So you may notice if you follow my Instagram pages, my weekly trollies on a Thursday are my most popular posts. But you will notice that often the products are repeated and that's because there's only a very small handful of foods in supermarkets that are pretty good choices. The rest tend to fall short whether it's with extra processing, many calories, low percentages of the food and the product. There's not that many great products. It's actually quite easy when I go shopping. The only downfall is that the trollies can be a little bit on the boring side because we are trying to choose the best options, not just options or communicate what's out there. We're trying to always hone in on what are the best choices and to make it easier for us, there's only a small handful and you'll see that if you do check out our product guide at the nutritioncouch.com because we really have found all of them. all of the products that we think are outstanding. And the truth is there is not that many great ones, particularly when you can see our whole areas in the supermarket are dedicated to processed biscuits, cakes, pastries, ice cream, snack food. You know, there's probably one or two of those products within each category, which has outstanding nutritional properties. So I hope that's helpful and maybe helps guide you a little bit as to why you might look at a food product and pick it over another. And that brings us to the end of Diet Notes for this week. Have a great week. (upbeat music)